Sermon delivered at the service of Imposition of Ashes
and Holy Communion on Ash Wednesday the 10th February 2016 by Bishop
Nicholas J G Sykes at St. Alban's Church, 461 Shedden Road, George
Town, Cayman Islands

Joel 2: 12f "Yet even now," says the Lord,
"return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping,
and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments. Return
to the Lord, your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to
anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and repents of evil.”

The prophet Joel uses the characteristically Hebraic way
of making comparisons when he expresses the Lord as saying in the
context of heartfelt repentance, “Rend your hearts and not your
garments.” It was not actually a direction to his repentant
listeners NOT to tear their clothes. Indeed, that was the recognised
way for thousands of years of expressing grief. What he was saying,
in effect, was “Be real about it.” If you are putting on a show
by tearing your garments and there is no prayer or repentance of the
heart, don’t do it! The Lord is not going to notice it. Whether or
not there may be men and women who will measure the extent of your
goodness by the cost of the clothing you have ruined, we can be 100%
sure that the Lord is not like that. He knows what is in man’s
heart. The “heart” in the Bible is the seat of man’s thinking
powers, rather than merely his emotions. So if a man tears his heart,
he is introducing a discontinuity to his thinking. He stops thinking
in one way and starts thinking in another, and the prophet is
observing that that is what needs to happen.

In Joel, we see the context of the
prophet’s cry to his people to be the prospect of some terrible
catastrophe. Many commentators consider it must be a swarm of
locusts, but it is recognised that Joel’s language goes far beyond
that at a number of places, even admitting that a plague of locusts
is indeed a catastrophic occurrence. When the Church, the Body of
Christ puts forward its Lenten expectation of almsgiving, fasting and
prayer the Body of Christ also is primarily concerned with the state
of our hearts, in other words, what our innermost intentions are. It
is recognised that in St. Paul’s words, “If I give away all that
I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I
gain nothing.” Yet we do consider that a man can do something, out
of love, in the way of prayer, self-denial or charitable work to
guide his heart along a Spirit-directed course. We also have a
catastrophe in mind, the catastrophe of an adverse judgment by God
upon our lives, particularly when the books are opened at life’s
end. Of course, we might have some less ultimate catastrophe in mind
as well. I am reminded that we actually did consider such a thing on
Ash Wednesday 2004, the year of Hurricane Ivan. We wondered then here
if our materialistic Cayman Islands society would face a catastrophe
as result of years of the alienation by some parents of some of their
children, or by governments alienating some of the people they
purported to rule. Such an event would be a judgment upon any of us
who could have done something about it, but did not. Perhaps there
may have been some similar prophetic forebodings prior to the
catastrophic weather conditions that both North America and Great
Britain in certain areas have recently been experiencing, not to
mention the current extension of drought conditions leading to threat
of famine in central Africa. And let us ask also if there is not some
aspect of the common life of the community, either here or elsewhere,
to which we are called to stretch out a Christian hand of assistance
or guidance. So we are to look into our hearts, our wills and our
intentions, with a view to reforming them, or in an old expression,
sanctifying them, in view of whatever catastrophe, ultimate
(certainly) or even proximate, we face now. So the Lord Jesus does
not say in the Gospel, Don’t give alms, don’t pray, or don’t
fast. What He says is, when you do these things, don’t do them for
the reward of man’s approval. Do them for the spiritual purpose of
strengthening and making productive your discipleship of the Christ,
the Son of God, and the Christ for others. We need to recognise that
the strengthening of discipleship does not come automatically,
without our intention. We do have to intend
to walk the way of Christ. We do have to intend
to put down those inordinate loves of earth’s goods, and pack our
hearts’ assessment of “treasure” back into the heaven where it
belongs. The Lenten practices are available for us to put teeth, as
it were, into such intentions. It
is possible that over recent years, some of the assumptions of our
lives on which we have depended have been shaken, and while that is
uncomfortable, Christians may be reminded by this to see it as a call
to change the nature of their dependence to a truer sort. Ever with
us is the acceptable time for genuine repentance and genuinely living
and enjoying openly our divinely dependent lifestyle, a lifestyle of
real repentance and genuine dependence on our Father who has given us
such grace as reconciliation with Him through Christ. May we live
this way in the face of whatever disaster confronts mankind and the
world; for this age is not self-sufficient or independent. It can
only live by drawing from outside itself, like a garden that needs
tending. If we have been truly dependent on our Father as we are
directed in today's Gospel, and as the Lenten disciplines can suggest
to us, as part of our reward from Him we may be His helpers in
tending this needy and thirsty garden.

In the second lesson today St Paul shows us a portrait
of his life, a life which we can interpret as integrating all the
Lenten disciplines before any of the Christian seasons like Lent were
distinguished in the Church’s life. We see “afflictions,
hardships, calamities”, general difficulties of a physical or
spiritual sort. We see “beatings, imprisonments, tumults”,
deprivations caused by other people, and we see “labours, sleepless
watchings, and starvation”, his undertakings in order to further
the gospel among men. He fasted, he prayed, he made himself poor to
make others rich. I see in St. Paul’s life the great sign of
Christ’s cross. For Christ Jesus Himself, more than His Apostle,
whose words these were, was treated as an "imposter", yet
was true: as a "nobody", yet was well known: as "dying",
and behold, He lived; as condemned, yet unconquered by death; as the
Man of sorrows, yet eternally rejoicing; as "poor", yet
making many rich; as "having nothing", and yet possessing
everything. Now, it was the One who was made sin who knew no sin, who
could make exodus into the Resurrection life that was first poured
down upon the apostles. The apostles then also bore their cross after
Christ Jesus in order to communicate that Resurrection life to their
charges. If we are to play our part in the communication of the
Resurrection life to our charges, we too must bear our cross after
Christ Jesus. Let our Lenten disciplines, then, be worked out of love
into the bearing of the cross, so that we play our part in
communicating the Resurrection life to any who look to us for
guidance or example. Let us like St. Paul say with cross-bearing
authority, we beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
We have Good News to proclaim and to live and die for. Repentance is
still a possibility. The Lord in His mercy may yet moderate or avert
the catastrophes that threaten.